chapotraphouse

That is not a good analysis of the situation, or a good understanding of it. I guess I'll tell my friends on the ground in Nepal (and you should tell our Nepalese users too) that they are just "western leftists" falling for another "misinfo campaign" because their damn lying eyes and ears are just tools of the US government.

This isn't some kind of "reality inverted itself" this is people using tools they use every day to fix a problem they had after the previous government turned out to be both useless and toothless. It's very, very dumb for them to use something like Discord to pick their new leader, but a big part of their issues was that the previous government was trying to ban things like Discord in the country, social media stuff that the average person uses every day, and doesn't give a shit about whether the US government can influence things on it.

The worry is how easily the US government could co-opt this movement, because they are basically leaving every single door open for them to do so, and the US will probably end up using that, they just don't seem to yet. Taking a "this is a movement by the people, but will probably become co-opted" isn't falling for anything. It's using the information we have to assess the situation, instead of just assuming that any time anything happens it is the Big Bad US government doing it. That's not material analysis, it's being scared of the monster under the bed and helps no one.